atomicskate - Shanghai…

Living in China (mainland!) since almost 3 years, there is something that I can’t find here and that I really miss…
Rock Concerts!!!

The fact is that 99% of Chinese people (or 99% of Chinese people that I’ve met?!) only listen to commercial Chinese pop-love songs (if you don’t know what I mean, here is a sample, or if you don’t believe me, you can listen to the 500 current most popular songs in China here). The remaining 1% is addicted to nice & creative Chinese underground music, from rock’n roll to electronic music, including reggae… I’m used to go to many small concerts, and I enjoy it!

But the International scene is absent in China…
That’s normal, because the public is not there… The only bands you can see are commercial-pop-crap Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne, The Rolling Stones, Linkin Park, Black Eyed Peas, Norah Jones…
But maybe it’s going to change thanks to some festivals like the Beijing Pop Festival or the Beijing Midi Festival. I hope so!!!

To come back to the main topic, if you wanna attend good concert, you should go abroad or… to Hong Kong!

Therefore I early bought my ticket for The Cure when I’ve heard they’re going to play in HK

It was on Monday, July 30^th, 2007 at Hong Kong, AsiaWorld Arena (亚洲国际博览馆) at 8:00pm.
The show was about 3 hours long!!!
Featuring:
- Robert Smith (vocals and guitar)
- Simon Gallup (bass guitar)
- Porl Thompson (guitar)
- Jason Cooper (drums)
 
 
Two amazing things for me during this concert.
- Glad to hear for the first time Porl Thompson playing guitar (he left the band in 1993, so I didn’t think to be able to see him one day!).
- Roger O’Donnell & Perry Bamonte are no more members, so I was thinking that Porl would take the keyboard sometimes, but… no keyboard on the scene! All along the show, Porl replaced keyboard by playing strange and awesome sounds with his guitar!

Each time I see Simon Gallup in concert, he has a new style! This time it was a new hair cut: a little bit punk style, long hairs ruffled, really short on the side.

Porl Thompson appeared totally shaved, with a tatoo that I’d never noticed on his skull! This hair cut is better than the one I’ve seen for his come back at Live8 concert in July 2005. And concerning guitar performance: no comparison with Perry Bamonte (moreover I didn’t like him), so it was really great to listen to Porl again!!!

Jason Cooper on his side impresses me more and more: he is still inconspicuous, but his way of playing become better and better, and I agree with Robert Smith when he says: "Boris was wonderful, Jason is more than wonderful"!

Funny things:
Robert has forgotten to sing some lyrics during "Just Like Heaven" as he was discussing with Simon.
Later, during the 1^st Encore (Let’s Go To Bed, Close To Me, Why Can’t I Be You?) some people started to pogo, so I joined them!!! Then, during WCIBY, Robert came close to us and acted like he wanted to jump or slam on us, smiling
 
 
The concert hall wasn’t really packed… but I’ve heard they sold out the tickets 3 weeks before(?)…
Concerning the price: 780HKD (=78euros) in the standing area, it’s incredibly expensive! Usually, if you don’t have seats, tickets should be cheaper, but it seems that Hong Kong’s AsiaWorld Arena hasn’t the same regulation…
Moreover, the security staff just under the stage has been trained to differentiate regular digital camera from Reflex digital camera… So, if your model looks like the second one, they became angry and maybe more… I still don’t understand such kind of stupid rules… You pay an exorbitant fee to be allowed to see your favorite band, but even can’t take pictures…
 
 
Here is the playlist (click on the links to see video streaming, or to download the video or MP3):